proliferating wildly. The obvious thing seemed to be to ride the
wave – but Sophia did the opposite.
“
In the 1990s, there was this great mix of Moomintrolls drawn
by different people,” she says of a time when the ageing Tove and
Lars were playing more of a backseat role in the company. “Some
of it was hideous and I didn’t want to see these great works turn
into a cheap, nasty brand.” One of her first moves was to remove
unacceptable pictures (Tove was said to have been appalled by
a Moomin holding a gun in one Japanese animation) and to
draw up a style guide, which decreed among other things that all
Moomintrolls should be white rather than coloured.
After Lars and Tove’s deaths, in 2000 and 2001 respectively,
Sophia went further and insisted that all Moomin merchandise
only feature Tove Jansson’s original artwork. “We wanted Tove to
be remembered by her original vision,” she says.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, that seems to have been good
business sense, not least in waking up the adult consumers who
now make up half of all Moomin sales. “We’re criticised for being
old-fashioned, but that’s the quality that sets us apart,” explains
manging director Kråkström, who currently oversees more than
400
Moomin licensees around the world. “There are lots of literary
characters and books, but very few have remained so true to
themselves – many have sold out to big entertainment monsters.
There’s this idea that books are disappearing; that all the
illustrations should be 3D. But that’s not true. And increasingly,
especially among the world’s growing middle class, there’s an
interest in looking back at things that are more durable, whether
it’s Burberry,
The Lord of the Rings
or Harry Potter. We’re still a
family business and we’ve had the same agent since the 1950s –
that’s comforting for people, and it adds value.”
»
Opposite
⁄
Tove Jansson’s
niece and Lars’s daughter
Sophia, currently creative
director of Oy Moomin
Characters Ltd
This page
⁄
Moomin
memorabilia on show
in Oy Moomin’s Helsinki
headquarters, including
books, boots and –
right
–
a photo of Tove with her
creations
n
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